A mother-daughter activist duo was in the spotlight recently as the moving force behind ASK. The acronym stands for Assistance for Safai Karamcharis. These refer to manual scavengers. Manual scavenging is defined as “manually cleaning, carrying, disposing of, or otherwise handling, human excreta in an insanitary latrine or in an open drain or sewer or in a septic tank or a pit”.

Manual scavengers usually use hand tools such as buckets, brooms and shovels. They often pay with their life as they are doing tasks without any safety equipment. A website has been set up under the ASK umbrella. This website is a platform outlining how families, who may have lost a family member to manual scavenging, can go about seeking legal help for compensation. It tells the usually desperately poor and clueless widow how to access the legal system to get her right.